


Turk's Honor

by EchoThruTheWoods



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-27 15:56:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7624813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EchoThruTheWoods/pseuds/EchoThruTheWoods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the FF7 Fanworks Exchange. KittenFair wanted to know what might have happened when Vincent and Veld, once partners in the Turks, met again during/after Meteorfall. Here is my answer.</p><p>Oh, and of course, the characters are all owned by Square Enix, masters of everything Final Fantasy!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turk's Honor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KittenFair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittenFair/gifts).



> I needed a framework for their meeting, so I started with Meteorfall, its approach and its after-effects. There is, as usual, a bit of swearing. KittenFair, I hope you like this! I had a lot of fun writing it.

Veld is supposed to be dead.  
  
The world is ending, Shinra’s a hot mess, and Veld is a traitor who defected in the midst of a crisis. The solution to that was a bullet for Veld, and one for his daughter, both of them rebels by the president’s lights.  
  
Everything’s turned ass over elbow. Heroes become villains, and it’s rogues to the rescue, leading the evacuation of Sector Five. Old Man Shinra would appreciate the joke, if he’d lived.  
  
Meteor hangs over their heads like the wrath of the gods. Panicked people, like trapped rats, can be dangerous. The trick is to keep them moving too fast to cause trouble. The Turks are spread thin, so Veld takes point himself, combing through the slums for hangers-on.  
  
Some want to argue. More than a few want to wait it out, convinced the almighty Shinra will somehow save their skins.  
  
“What do you think they sent us for?” Not strictly true, but there isn’t time to nitpick. Veld harries the reluctant out of shacks and tenements, blaring orders with a bullhorn and a microphone. “Move, you fools! Head for the gates!”  
  
He sends them toward the searchlight beams criss-crossing the bloody sky, manned by whichever Turk needs a breather from herding evacuees. Winds created by Meteor’s force spin twisting bands of grit and garbage, obscuring Veld’s view. His amplified voice bounces back at him from the walls of a long-abandoned power station in the deepest corner of the sector.  
  
A light shines behind a greasy window. He ducks through the doorway into some squatter’s living space, no more than a pallet, blankets, and a battery lantern. No place to hide. They’re gone. He pauses to breathe, to get his bearings, listening to the chaos around him. The night echoes and re-echoes with shouts, shrieking alarms, and an ominous creaking that grows to a shuddering groan.  
  
He recognizes the sound a moment too late.  
  
Bricks and timber crash around him as he rolls into a crouch, arms crossed over his head. He gets lucky. A door comes down at an angle against his back, deflecting the heaviest debris, and stays there, propped up by the first load of fallen bricks. They keep coming, thump-thump-thump-thump-thump hard and fast as bullets. It stops. He dares to breathe, to move.  
  
He’s on his knees in a small, cramped space; can’t even stand up. Now who’s the trapped rat? No broken bones, for which he’d thank the gods if he still believed in them.  
  
He pushes upwards. A few bricks slide off of the door. Not enough. A faint sliver of night sky glimmers above him, giving him air. The cries and the wind’s voice are muffled, distant.  
  
“HEY!… ANYONE?” No response. He’s done too good a job clearing the area. The horn and mike are lost. His phone, disturbed by Meteor’s energy, crackles and dies. He’s on his own.  
  
He braces his legs as best he can, both hands flat against the door above him, and shoves hard. It shifts. He sucks in a deep breath, lets it out, pushes again. And again, arms shaking with effort. He gains an inch or two, and then at his next push a cascade of bricks slides down the opening, barely missing his head. He catches a faceful of dust, ducks his head, coughing and spitting. When he looks up, the opening has shrunk by half. At this rate he’ll run out of air before Meteor gets him.  
  
He rests for a few minutes, then tries again. Each time, the door moves, but never enough to enlarge the open space above him. Something too heavy to lift weighs it down--probably the roof. Adrenaline and will spark the materia in his left arm, but even with that boost, the door stays stuck.  
  
Breath comes shallow now. Sweat runs into his eyes, stinging. His mouth is dry, coated with musty clay and aged mortar. Pain knifes through his right shoulder; he’s torn something. He braces again, arms spread wide, ignoring the protest of his back and hips, and gives it everything he has.  
  
The door flips up and back so fast he loses his balance, banging his knees on the rubble. Cool air rushes in, sweeter than fine wine. He fills his lungs, and jerks back as a long, black-clad arm appears. Veld grasps the offered limb, lets it pull him out of the hole.  
  
Keeping his grip on the cold, narrow hand until he gets his feet under him, he slides down off of the pile of bricks and stares his rescuer in the face. His heart skips a beat, sets up a rhythm in double-time.  
  
“Valentine. What are you doing here?”  
  
“Saving your life.” Vincent Valentine, erstwhile Turk, ex-partner, ex-friend, looks Veld over with that slightly-to-the-left-of-sane red gaze. “Are you hurt?”  
  
“I’ve had worse.” His heartbeat refuses to settle. Death’s come too close, made him light-headed. “Heard you’d turned up. Didn’t expect to see you here.”  
  
“Reeve asked me to help evacuate the city. My sector’s done.”  
  
Veld’s brain flashes back to a room full of bones, frustration warring with grief and hope.  
  
“So you got out of that box for Shinra? And before that for a delusional failed SOLDIER? But not for me.”  
  
“The WRO isn’t Shinra. And if it wasn’t for that ‘failed SOLDIER’ you’d already be dead. You should be grateful.”  
  
“Don’t even go there! I don’t need a lecture from a coward who hid in a fucking coffin for thirty years!”  
  
“And I don’t need to justify myself to a self-righteous prick!”  
  
Veld’s fist flies up to connect with the edge of Vincent’s jaw. Recoil burns a path up his arm from bruised knuckles to aching shoulder.  
  
Anyone else would drop like a stone. Vincent just backs a step, shaking his head. “Words never used to get to you.”  
  
“Don’t flatter yourself. I’ve been cursed out by experts.”  
  
“Then what was that for? Withdrawing from the world?”  
  
Breathless, Veld pushes the words out like shards of glass. “That was for dying.”  
  
   
# # # # #  
  
  
Whether by the grace of the gods, or sheer blind luck, most of the people Veld gives a damn about survive Meteor’s impact. Veld doesn’t expect to see Valentine again. Isn’t keeping an eye out for him, hell no.  
  
Reeve Tuesti’s optimistically-named World Regenesis Organization sets up a staging area outside of the flattened city. Mostly volunteers, they work rescue and recovery, manning field hospitals and morgues. Reeve brings in personnel from Junon to augment their numbers.  
  
There are shortages of everything, but no one starves. Supplies come in from somewhere. There is always clean water. Veld suspects magic, but Reeve won’t talk. Still, it isn’t badly done. Veld has no idea how it’s funded--it can’t all be Reeve’s own money--but he’ll find out. Secrets get under his skin.  
  
Temporary housing comes in the form of trailers, each fourteen feet by eight. Tseng has a conversation with Reeve, very cordial and matter-of-fact, in which the Turks’ contributions during Meteorfall are mentioned once or twice. The next day the Turks call two of the trailers home and headquarters.  
  
“You’re more than welcome to stay with us,” Tseng tells Veld. “You and your daughter both.”  
  
“I don’t think so,” says Veld. “Let the black sheep and the old dog fade into the background where they belong.”  
  
“Then, you really are retiring?” Tseng manages to look both relieved and disheartened at the same time. Veld grins.  
  
“You can find me when you need me. I have an arrangement with Reeve.”  
  
On the outskirts of Midgar, a new city begins to rise, built of materials scavenged from the ruins. The first building finished becomes a pub, that most essential of structures, selling homebrew that can strip paint at forty paces. Business booms. There isn’t much gil to go around, but what there is changes hands rapidly. Trade springs up in both goods and services, and where there is trade, there are…opportunists.  
  
Veld sits outside the pub, catching the afternoon sun, a rare pleasure for a man used to Midgar’s shadows. Just another refugee in rough clothing, cement dust in his hair, taking a break from work. Ordinary, and old besides. People converse freely around him.  
  
He hears a name he recognizes from the old Midgar underworld, one of several men who’ve been selling fake shares in “the new WRO energy corporation”. Best luck he’s had for months; every lead has proven false. Reeve’s had his good name compromised, and his promises turned into lies. He wants these scumbags taken down even more than Veld does.  
  
Two men, every bit as scruffy as Veld, take seats nearby. Feigning a doze, he listens while they belly-ache about their jobs, their girlfriends, the weather and the WRO. After a couple of beers, they get careless, muttering about the scam and the money they’re owed. Veld sinks further into his seat, taking mental notes.  
  
Someone sits on the bench beside him, nudges his elbow, once, twice.  
  
“Bugger off,” he growls, and catches a scent of cold earth, of leather and brass, and gunpowder, acrid and unmistakable. Over it all, the bitter aroma of coffee, rare as an honest man.  
  
He turns his head a fraction. Vincent holds out the paper cup, its contents hot and black as sin. The bastard remembers his taste. Veld gives in and accepts the peace offering.  
  
“Figured you’d gone back to Nibelheim,” he says, after savoring the first glorious mouthful.  
  
“I thought about it. There was no one--” Vincent glances at Veld. “Nothing to go back for.”  
  
“Fair enough. But--” He sits up straight, the steaming cup cradled in his hands. “I’ve got to ask, and you owe me an answer. When Shears and I found you in the mansion, you refused to leave. So why’d you change your mind for Strife and his friends?” That’s the nagging ache in quiet hours, the sore spot that he keeps poking at when he can’t sleep.  
  
“I had unfinished business.” The brass talons clink as Vincent’s fingers curl and spread.  
  
Veld makes a guess. “Hojo.” At Vincent’s slow, silent nod, Veld sighs. “Yeah, about that. When I knew the man, he wasn’t all bad.” He lifts his prosthetic arm, sunlight sliding over the blued steel curves. “This gave me back my job. Without it--”  
  
“How is your daughter, Veld?”  
  
Ouch. Veld raises his cup in salute. “Okay, direct hit. Your Turk instincts are intact. Congratulations.”  
  
“Veld--”  
  
“Leave it. He’s dead. Right?”  
  
“I’m not sure. Probably.”  
  
“Fucking fantastic.” The coffee’s gone lukewarm. Behind them, the men Veld’s been watching finish their drinks and leave, walking quickly. “I’ve got to go.”  
  
Vincent gestures at the two men. “Them? Don’t bother. They’re operating out of a shack in the ditch behind the water tower on Second Chance Avenue.”  
  
Veld blinks. “Valentine, if you’re shitting me, I swear to god---”  
  
“No.” Vincent’s black-gloved human fingers twist into a sign Veld hasn’t seen for three decades. “Turk’s honor.”  
  
That’s…unexpected, but no more so than being sought out by Vincent in the first place. Taking it at face value, Veld pulls out his phone, calls Tseng, talks briefly. Waits, sipping coffee, making it last. When his phone buzzes, he reads the text, and smiles with dark satisfaction. “Got the son of a bitch. And his crew.”  
  
“You’re welcome.”  
  
Veld looks up at the sky, in search of something…patience, or his sense of humor. “You’ve been waiting to spring this on me.”  
  
“Maybe. Or maybe it was just a fortuitous sequence of random events.”  
  
Typical Valentine obfuscation. Some things never change, while others are warped out of all common sense. He eyes Vincent sidelong, inexplicably irritated by the layers of leather and heavy fabric between Vincent and the outside world. “Aren’t you hot in that get-up?”  
  
“Not really. So…Felicia? She’s not…”  
  
“She’s alive. Goes by ‘Elfe’ now. Been better, been worse. She’ll make it. She’s too ornery to die.”  
  
“Ah. Like her father.”  
  
The silence stretches. A prickly silence, surrounding Vincent like barbed wire. Familiar stranger, once hyper as a child jacked up on sweets, now film noir come to life. Does his heart still beat? Does he still eat, drink, breathe? Does it matter?  
  
“Where’d you get the coffee?”  
  
“I have my sources.”  
  
“It’s coffee, Valentine, not contraband. Where?”  
  
“I’m not going to tell you. But I’ll bring you a cup, every morning.”  
  
That should be less enticing than it actually is. “And what do you want in return?”  
  
“Let me work with you.”  
  
“You don’t need me for that. Talk to Reeve.”  
  
“Did I say I want to work for Reeve?”  
  
“What the hell would you do, working with me?”  
  
“Scout ahead of you,” says Vincent. “Back you up. Stand beside you.”  
  
Veld considers that, looking across the square at girders and scaffolding and coveralled laborers. On the horizon, Midgar’s dark profile looms, as tangled and hollow as Veld’s heart. Some people say life is a wheel, endlessly turning; but nothing can be as it once was, not in his experience.  
  
“I’ve aged, Vince. And you’re still, what? Twenty-seven? What common ground is left to us?”  
  
“Only what we’ve always had. Today, and the possibility of tomorrow.”  
  
It can’t be that simple. He’s lost control of the conversation, if he ever had it. _Old man, you’re losing your touch._  
  
“Why should I take you on again? AWOL thirty years. Ought to kick your ass just on general principles.”  
  
“You could,” says Vincent, lips twitching upward. “Or you could just admit you need a partner, and no one’s a better fit.”  
  
Veld snorts. “Two wolves in the dark, eh?”  
  
The hint of a smile grows, just a little. “Running in the wind.”  
  
“Coffee every morning?”  
  
Vincent puts a hand over his heart. “Every morning, without fail.” Again that fluid twist of the long, slender fingers. His and Veld’s private sign to each other, secret and sacrosanct.  
  
“Make it a thermos,” says Veld, “and you’ve got a deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> The remarks that Veld and Vincent make regarding wolves in the dark, running in the wind, are from the song "Slow and Steady", by Of Monsters and Men. Here is the full verse, which is so very Vincent I've been dying to use it in a story:
> 
> My dear old friend, take me for a spin  
> Two wolves in the dark, running in the wind  
> I’m letting go, but I’ve never felt better  
> Passing by all the monsters in my head


End file.
